L to the O to the A

LOA LOA LOA LOA LOA LOA LOA!!!!!!!!!!!!

 If I were super smart and could make dancing, wavy letters, I would do it.  So, picture me doing the wave. 

LOA, you say?  Letter of Appreciation?  Letter of Admonishment?  Line of Accounting?  I wrote in an earlier post that LOA stands for Letter of Acceptance.  Although technically, it is called a Letter Seeking Confirmation, so that would make it an LSC…but we call it an LOA.  Makes total sense, right??  Ha!  Told you that there were a lot of acronyms in adoption. 

LO whatever…so what does this mean?  This means that the government agency in China that handles international adoptions has formally approved our application to adopt Doodlebug.  We received PA – pre-approval – back in November to proceed with the adoption.  We completed our home study and compiled our dossier, which is a collection of documents that introduces us to China as adoptive parents.  There is another post in here about our dossier preparation, which took us about 3-4 months.  Anyhoo….once the dossier is compiled and authenticated by everyone except Santa Claus, it is sent to China to be logged in.  We waited almost 30 days for a LID – Log in Date – and another 72 days for our LOA.  Basically, this just means that the adoption authorities in China have reviewed our dossier and found that it is A. Satisfactory and B. that the info in the dossier matches the documents we sent for PA (that’s pre-approval, keep up). 

72 days is a long time.  So, what is next?  We have submitted our I-800 to the USCIS, which is a “Petition to Classify a Convention Adoptee as an Immediate Relative”.  We had to sign something that stated we were aware that he didn’t have a job.  Yes people, our kid is a slacker.  This will take 2-3 weeks to approve.  We hope to hear something in another week or so.  The forms have to go to a lockbox in Dallas “for security reasons” and then 10-14 days later, they land on our immigration officer’s desk in Missouri.  Did you know they’re bringing back the Pony Express?  After our officer reviews this, we get another form and fill out another form to get Doodlebug's U.S. visa started.  He will enter the U.S. on a Chinese passport and will become a U.S. citizen as soon as he clears immigration on the airport. 

After he gets his visa paperwork started, our stuff is sent to the U.S. consulate in China, where it will wait until we get there.  We will then receive a TA – Travel Approval – which is an invite go to China to finish the adoption.  We’re working on our Chinese visitor’s visas right now.  So yes, this is a lot of paperwork.  I can barely keep it all straight. 

Best guess, we are looking at middle August to travel, if we don’t get smacked with any substantial delays.  We waited longer than we’d anticipated for our LID and our LOA, which added about an extra month on to our wait time. 

It is definitely a time to celebrate!!!